||| Gratuitous Twitter photo of Simon Webbe, who's currently treading the boards at the Palladium in Sister Act: The Musical. In pictures.

||| Meet the gay housewives of New York. Brian Moylan writes at Gawker: "It's filled with just the fame-hungry, attractive, horrible people you could have imagined. They're all models! This is going to be a fantastic mess." Vile beautiful people - what more could you ask for?

||| Jamaica, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Rekers: Anti-Gay bigotry really is a trick to deceive the naïve.

||| At the other end of the scale, Sweden has been named Europe's most gay-friendly country. And let's face it, who'd turn down a nice, fresh Swiss boy?

||| Ukraine comes last (as Mae West said to the diplomat) in the Rainbow Europe County Index.
||| Jockstraps at dawn as organisations clash over the World Outgames and the Gay Games.

||| A Brazilian man has been reunited with his American husband after 3 years. Massachusetts Senator John Kerry lobbied for the reunion on humanitarian grounds.

||| George Rekers doubled his fee to give testimony in the trial to uphold Florida's gay adoption ban - before being caught with a rent boy half his age.

||| "Well I feel my work here is done. I officially made an afghani [sic] holdup a sign that says 'I'm a faggot' while I took a picture of him." Facebook status update from Lance Cpl. Lionel Garcia on 24th May.

||| Anti-gays hide their bias behind the Bible, L.Z. Granderson (left) writes. Conservatives don't use Scripture to condemn murder, but often do against gays. Some rarely attend church, but they can find Leviticus 18:22 blindfolded.

||| Lifting a ban on gay blood donors would increase blood supply in the US by some 200,000 pints.

||| Redneck Australian football player Jason Akermanis has been suspended by his team following his newspaper column urging gay players to stay in the closet.

||| Attitude, the troubled gay lifestyle magazine, has been sold, following the collapse into administration of magazine distributer Magazine Marketing Company.

||| Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell will present a documentary on the Pope. He says, "My aim is to make a robustly factual programme that explores the Pope's personal, religious and political journey since the 1930s, as well as the motives and effects of his controversial policies." Perhaps Sinead O'Connor will report from the field...

||| The right-wing English Defence League has a 115-strong gay and lesbian division, as well as "a smattering of non–white faces... one of the group's leaders is Guramit Singh, a British-born Sikh". Islamaphobia unites all, it seems...

||| The Labour Party group for GBLT Rights is thrown out of Greencoat Boy pub in Westminster - a stone's throw from the Houses of Parliament - and insulted by staff.

||| But you can't fault Punch Taverns - the chain responsible for the pub - for their reaction. The staff member in question is suspended, an investigation launched and a rainbow flag hung in the window.

||| In the wake of the resignation of David Laws from the Cabinet, The ScumSuncomicnewspaper asks its readers (readers? Ha!): "Should gay people be cabinet ministers?"

||| Meanwhile, The Daily Mail's Richard Littlejohn comments, "To be honest, I've always considered all Liberal MPs to be homosexuals unless furnished with concrete proof to the contrary."

||| Of course, the press are more homophobic than the public. Patrick Strudwick writes in The Guardian: "The Sun poll on gay people in the cabinet shows the rightwing press haven't noticed how liberal the public have become."

||| And so, it was neither inevitable nor right that Laws resigned. Because the media conspired to make it happen.

||| "I want to love a strong young man of the lower classes and be loved by him and even hurt by him." Why E.M. Foster didn't publish another book following 1924's A Passage To India, until his death in 1970. More: "Now I am 85 how annoyed I am with society for wasting my time by making homosexuality criminal. The subterfuges and the self-consciousnesses that might have been avoided."

||| Antony Grey, "arguably the most important British gay rights campaigner of the 20th century", is dead. He was 82. "He worked in the hostile environment of the 1950s and 60s to bring about the decriminalisation of male homosexual acts, enabling an open and active gay liberation movement to flourish."

||| Porn entrepreneur Michael Lucas writes about the struggle for gay pride in his native Russia.

||| Anti-gay, racist attacks surge in Rome on the back of spiralling unemployment, rising alcohol consumption and the election of a former neo-facist as Mayor.

||| A brutal attack on a 24-year-old near the Colosseum has led to calls for new anti-homophobia laws.

||| Some 3000 Greeks marched through Athens on Saturday to demonstrate GBLT pride, and protest against discrimination.

||| Denmark: Why teenagers are more likely to be behind anti-gay hate crimes.

||| "The Portuguese man that I am, I try to keep informed about what is happening in my country. I know the law was passed and the comment it deserves is that we must respect the choices made by anyone, because, after all, all citizens should have the exact same rights and responsibilities." Cristiano Ronaldo on the passage of marriage equality in his native Portugal.

||| Uganda: Blackmail, extortion and threats - the Uganda National Anti-Homosexual Taskforce ratchets up the hate.

||| Nigerian bishop Rt Rev Isaac Orama: Gays are "inhuman, insane, satanic and not fit to live". (Well, maybe James Earl Hardy, but not the rest of us!) But did he say it? Or did he not?

||| Uganda: "The African Church is the only one that is still standing against homosexuality. The Europeans are finished. If we follow them, we shall end up in Sodom and Gomorrah." President Yoweri Museveni warns against the dangers posed by homosexuality.

||| Kele Okereke's solo debut, The Boxer, is out on Monday 21st June. You might recall the sleek and sexy video for the first single, Tenderoni, back in Issue 63. Overrating The Underrated has two more songs from the album to listen to.

||| ...and on screen, with a 10-part fourth series co-produced with American network Starz (of Spartacus: Blood and Sand fame).

||| Coronation Street is cancelled for a week following the shootings in Cumbria, and EastEnders is forced to reshoot scenes that would have seen killer preacher Lucas strangle a prostitute, after the multiple murders of sex workers in the north. Reality really is a pain in the neck.

||| Big Brother is back too, for one last hurrah, and there's a definite funeral atmosphere...

||| Victoria Coren has a fascinating take on the reaction to the much-maligned Sex & The City 2. "If your misogyny is tickled, that's because it is an intensely misogynistic movie. If you despise the women, it is because the film wants you to despise the women. Samantha (Kim Cattrall), once a confident, funny female character who enjoyed casual sex, is, in this film, demeaned, humiliated and punished like no woman has been since the great days of the Victorian novel. She is made grotesque."

||| Meanwhile, Mark Kermode reviewsA Single Man. "I had never even heard of Tom Ford before I saw A Single Man; indeed, when being briefed on his history before an interview for The Culture Show I was genuinely startled to discover that he had some celebrity status. As far as I knew, he was the hitherto unknown director of an oddball, indie-inflected, arthouse pic in which a number of actors whom I greatly admire did some of their best work."

7
comments:

1.)I'd like to Thank Diesel Washington's mama for birthin that big hunka hunka burnin love.2.) In total agreement with the Sex and The City 2 review. Samantha became a caricature of herself. She was not empowered and sexually free. She was a grotesque nympho!3.) Let me get this straight (no pun intended)...Hollywood can make movies like The Passion of The Christ (a three hour long snuff film that had me, at the age of 18,terrified to go to sleep)...But shriek at the idea of two guys having sex (I love you Phillip Morris). No further comments.4.) Okay, I like Lady Gaga but now she's sorta getting on my nerves. Time for a time out. 5.) I still think that hole in Guatemala was created by a giant prehistoric bird (to lay her eggs). They'll hatch in 2012 and that will be the end of the human race. 6.)Whoa I live in the number one meat eating country! I rarely eat meat...which often gets me accused of having an eating disorder. Oh well. 7.)Honestly, I don't know what to say about Malawi and their ignorance. For once I'm pretty speechless.8.) haha, I love those Kiss Ins! I would be involved in one just to kiss. I love it...9.)I think the blood ban is so patently stupid. I donated blood ten years ago in Highschool. That pretty much means the regulations are not that rigid. Anyone can go in and say they have not had sex with a man...and for all you know that could mean that same day. Also, they are operating under the ASSumption that only gay men are sluts...ha!

"I would also like to take this opportunity to squash the persistent rumours about mysterious 'disappearances' and emphasize that rural and urban areas are now enjoying a life of harmony and peace. I'm sure you're glad to hear this. And I'm happy you're glad."